Poll

Columns

I am glad to report that Northeastern Technical College is set to receive $2.3 million in funding for a new industrial training center in Pageland and other needs as the S.C. House of Representatives sends its completed budget to the Senate.
After meeting with NETC officials and industry leaders in Pageland, it was apparent that a new training facility was urgently needed to address the present and future demands for skilled employees in District 53.

The controversy encircling former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her use of private email to conduct public business provides our latest example of government in the shadows, a situation we know well in South Carolina.
“Shadow government,” as S.C. Press Association Executive Director Bill Rogers has labeled it, means conducting public business via private emails, texts, Twitter or other social media accounts that are not connected to government servers and thus not retrievable by government agencies and the public.

On behalf of the students and staff of Lancaster High School, we would like to express a heartfelt appreciation to the fans of the Lady Bruins basketball team. Our fans demonstrated fantastic support during the recent playoff run.
Winning a state championship is quite an accomplishment, and completing a season at 27-0 is phenomenal. This great group of young ladies handled themselves with class on and off the court. Coach Ronnie Robinson and his staff provided great direction and leadership. In short, he is the type of man you want your kids to be around.

It’s Sunshine Week in South Carolina and the nation.
It is a time to recognize and encourage open government and letting the sun shine in on public documents and meetings.
You may not know there are problems with transparency in government in our state, but there are, despite our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

I am writing to say a few things concerning the article on page 11 of the March 6 paper that asked, “Where are you going?” (Editor’s note: The article was part of a sponsored religious message, not a story.)
The person who wrote the article, Christopher Simon, seems to be very uninformed about the word of God.
Yes, Mr. Simon, we can know with certainty and announce that we are going to heaven. That is, if we believe God’s word.

I am always in a search for truth. I cannot find much coming out of our current administrative branch of our GovCo. George Orwell said, “Some ideas are so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe them.”
This statement describes Marie Harf, spokesperson for the U.S. State Department and the folks she works for.

The big issue facing our legislators this year in Columbia is a massive new gas tax hike. Big money special interest groups like the S.C. Chamber of Commerce have been aggressively lobbying the Legislature to vote for proposals that would double our current gas tax rate.

There have been rumors that Indian Land students may be bused to other under-capacity schools as an option to address the over-capacity issues at Indian Land Middle and Indian Land High schools.
The Lancaster County school board discussed this issue at a recent retreat and has given me the following statement:
“In a rare situation, if it becomes necessary to bus students to another school, the school district will do its utmost to insure those children presently in the attendance area will continue to attend school within their attendance area.”

I love this state, I really do – and that’s why I get so frustrated when we can’t do the obvious right thing for stupid reasons. (Like, say, $29,000 worth of free football tickets, but more on that in a moment.)
It seems to happen a lot and the current prime example of this is how higher education in this state is run, or probably more accurately, not run.